Torsten Jeworrek, the Munich Re board member responsible for global reinsurance business said: “Thankfully, a sequence of severe natural catastrophes like last year's is a very rare occurrence. We had to contend with events with return periods of once every 1,000 years or even higher at the locations concerned. But we are prepared for such extreme situations. It is the insurance industry's task to cover extreme losses as well, to help society cope with such events and to learn from them in order to protect mankind better from these natural perils.”

The reinsurers said its analysis of the past year had found a series of devastating earthquakes and a large number of weather-related catastrophes made 2011 the costliest year ever in terms of natural catastrophe losses.

It put the economic losses at around $380 billon, a figure nearly two-thirds higher than in 2005, the previous record year with losses of $220 billion. The earthquakes in Japan in March and New Zealand in February alone caused almost two-thirds of these losses. Insured losses of $105bn also exceeded the previous record figure of $101billion in 2005.

Despite the devastating series of earthquakes Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research unit said “Even if it seems hard to believe given recent events, the probability of earthquakes has not increased. However, these severe earthquakes are timely reminders that the decisions on where to build towns need careful and serious consideration of these risks, especially where certain buildings are concerned, above all nuclear power plants. Also, building codes in regions exposed to earthquakes need to be made even stricter, so that buildings do not just remain standing to an extent sufficient to save lives but can be used again afterwards.”